The background description provided herein is for the purpose of generally presenting the context of the disclosure. Work of the presently named inventors, to the extent the work is described in this background section, as well as aspects of the description that may not otherwise qualify as prior art at the time of filing, are neither expressly nor impliedly admitted as prior art against the present disclosure.
Digital video content that is available on DVDs and in a broadcast environment is restricted to relatively few video resolutions. These video resolutions are typically “standard definition” or “high definition”.
In contrast, video content that is streamed over the Internet spans a wide range of resolutions from low definition Quarter Video Graphics Array (QVGA) (e.g., 320×240 pixel resolution) to high definition (e.g., 720 lines of progressive video (720p)). Further, Internet video content is compressed using one of a variety of standard codecs or proprietary codecs and covers a wide range of bitrates, e.g., from 200 kbps to greater than 5 Mbps.
Wide variations in resolutions, codec artifacts and bitrates lead to a wide range of video quality for the streamed video content. Further, network bandwidth is often limited. Therefore, video content is often scaled to the available bandwidth. This scaling may affect video quality. Most streaming video content is therefore of much lower quality than typical broadcast TV services.
Many receivers, e.g., an Internet Protocol TV (IPTV) set top box, include a video post-processing function to improve quality of video content.